The most significant advantage of Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor over previous individual tools like System Monitor, Performance Logs and Alerts, and Server Performance Advisor is that it combines the functionality of those tools into a single interface with common methods for defining the data to be collected.

By expanding each of these monitored elements, you can identify which processes are using which resources.

Reliability Monitor helps you to quickly diagnose potential causes of instability so that you can apply rollback scenarios or updates in a targeted manner, rather than attempting a broad-spectrum update or reconfiguration in response to sudden changes in system behavior.

The Performance Log Users group is a built-in group in Windows Vista that is intended to allow users who are not local Administrators to perform many of the functions related to performance monitoring and logging.

Once a group of data collectors is stored as a Data Collector Set, operations such as scheduling can be applied to the entire set through a single property change.

You can schedule repeated collection of a Data Collector Set to create logs, load it in Performance Monitor to see the data in real time, and save it as a template to use on other computers.

By viewing changes to the system (installation or removal of applications and updates to the operating system) side by side with failures (application, operating system, or hardware failures), you can develop a strategy for addressing the issues quickly.

Whether you create a Data Collector Set for one-time use or to log activity on an ongoing basis, the interface for creation, scheduling, and modification is the same.

In previous versions of Windows, this real-time, process-specific data was only available in limited form in Task Manager.